THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 





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When she lit her glimmering tapers 
Round the day's dead sanctities Page 52 



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HE HOUND OF 
HEAVEN 

By FRANCIS THOMPSON 



WIITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY 

STELLA LANGDALE 




NEW YORK 
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
1922 



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COPYRIGHT, 1922, 

By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc. 



PBINTED IS THE U. S. A. 



V- 



OCI.A6S6681 



OCT 17 72 



INTRODUCTION 

The Rev. Mark J. McNeal. S. J., who was one 
of the successors of Lafcadio Hearn in the chair of 
English Literature at the Tokyo Imperial Univer- 
sity, in an interesting article recounts the following 
incident of his experience in that institution. "I 
was seated on the examining board with Professor 
Ichikawa, the dean of the English department . . . 
There entered the room a student whom I recog- 
nized as among the best in the class, a sharp young 
chap with big Mongolian eyes, and one who had 
never to my knowledge given any hint of even a 
leaning toward Christianity. I remembered, how- 
ever, that his thesis submitted for a degree had 
been a study of Francis Thompson. Following 
the usual custom, I began to question him about 
his thesis. 

" 'Why did you choose Thompson?' 
" 'Well, he is quite a famous poet.' 

5 



INTRODUCTION 

" 'What kind of poet is he?' 

" 'We might call him a mystic.' 

" 'Is he a mystic of the orthodox sort, like 
Cynewulf or Crashaw; or an unorthodox mystic, 
like Blake or Shelley?' 

" 'Oh, he's orthodox.' 

" 'Well, now, what do you consider his greatest 
production?' 

" 'Why, I should say "The Hound of Heaven." ' 

" 'Well, what on earth does Thompson mean 
by that Hound?' 

" 'He means God.' 

" 'But is not that a rather irreverent way for 
Thompson to be talking about God, calling Him 
a hound? What does he mean by comparing God 
to a hound?' 

" 'Well, he means the pursuit of God.' 

" 'Oh, I see, Thompson is pursuing God, is he?' 

" 'Oh, no. He is rather running away from 
God.' 

" 'Well, then, God is pursuing Thompson, is 
that it?' 

" 'Yes, that's it.' 

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INTRODUCTION 

"'But, see here; according to Thompson's be- 
lief God is everywhere, isn't He?' 

" 'Yes.' 

" 'Well, then, how can God be going after 
Thompson? Is it a physical pursuit?' 

" 'No. It is a moral pursuit.' 

"'A moral pursuit! What's that? What is 
God after?' 

" 'He is after Thompson's love.' 

"And then we, the Jesuit and the Buddhist, be- 
gan to follow the windings and turnings of that 
wondrous poem, the most mystic and spiritual 
thing that has been written since St. Teresa laid 
down her pen. What the other member of the ex- 
amining board thought of it all I never heard. 
But I think I acquired a satisfactory answer to 
that question so often put to me: Can the Japa- 
nese really grasp a spiritual truth? Do they really 
get at the meaning of Christianity? This, of a 
race that has produced more martyrs than any 
other nation since the fall of Rome and that kept 
the Faith for two centuries without a visible symbol 
or document!" 

7 



INTRODUCTION 

The incident supplies matter for other conclu- 
sions more germane to the subject of this essay. 
The late Bert Leston Taylor, a journalist whose 
journalism had a literary facet of critical bril- 
liance, once declared that he could not perceive the 
excellence of Francis Thompson's poetry. When 
someone suggested that it might be that he was not 
spiritual enough, the retort was laconic and crush- 
ing, "Or, perhaps, not ecclesiastical enough." 
Like most good retorts Taylor's had more wit than 
truth. He was obsessed by the notion, prevalent 
among a certain class of literary critics, that Fran- 
cis Thompson's fame was the artificially stimu- 
lated applause of a Catholic coterie, whose enthu- 
siasm could hardly be shared by readers with no 
particular curiosity about Catholic ideas or modes 
of religion. It was probably this obsession which 
prompted that able critic, Mr. H. D. Traill, to 
write to Mr. Wilfrid Meynell when the "Hound 
of Heaven" first appeared: "I quite agree with 
you in thinking him a remarkable poet, but, if he 
is ever to become other than a 'poet's poet' or 
'critic's poet' — if indeed it is worth anyone's am- 

8 



INTRODUCTION 

bition to be other than that — it will only be by 
working in a different manner. A 'public' to 
appreciate the 'Hound of Heaven' is to me incon- 
ceivable." Mr. William Archer, an experienced 
judge of popular likes, was of the same opinion. 
"Yet," Francis Thompson's biographer tells us, 
"in the three years after Thompson's death the 
separate edition of the 'Hound of Heaven' sold 
fifty thousand copies; and, apart from anthologies, 
many more thousands were sold of the books con- 
taining it." When the "Hound of Heaven" is 
selected for study, and explained in words of one 
syllable, by a young Japanese student in the Tokyo 
Imperial University almost thirty years after the 
poem was published, one can hardly maintain 
that it calls for certain ecclesiastical affiliations 
before it can be understood and felt, or that its 
"public" is necessarily circumscribed. 

It must be owned indeed that Francis Thompson 
was a puzzle to his contemporaries of the nine- 
ties. He paid the usual penalty of vaulting origi- 
nality. The decade is famous for its bold experi- 
ments and shining successes in the art of poetry. 

9 



INTRODUCTION 

One might expect that a public, grown accustomed 
to exquisitely wrought novelties and eager to ex- 
tend them a welcome, would have been preordained 
to recognize and hail the genius of Thompson. 
But it wa9 not so. The estheticism of the nineties, 
for all its sweet and fragile flowers, was rooted in 
the dark passions of the flesh. Its language was 
the language of death and despair and annihila- 
tion and the Epicurean need of exhausting the hed- 
onistic possibilities of life ere the final engulfing 
in darkness and silence. When the speech of 
Thompson, laden with religion and spirituality and 
Christian mystery, broke with golden turbulence 
upon the world of the nineties, the critics were 
abashed and knew not what to think of it. The 
effect was somewhat like that produced by Attwa- 
ter, in Stevenson's "The Ebb-Tide," when he began 
suddenly to discourse on Divine Grace to the a- 
mazement of Herrick and his crew of scoundrels 
from the stolen Farallone. "Oh," exclaimed the 
unspeakable Huish, when they had recovered 
breath, "Oh, look 'ere, turn down the lights at once, 
and the Band of 'Ope will oblige! This ain't a 

10 



INTRODUCTION 

spiritual seance." It had something akin to the 
madness of poor Christopher Smart when he fell 
into the habit of dropping on his knees and pray- 
ing in the crowded London streets. There was 
incongruity, verging on the indecent, in this intru- 
sion of religion into art, as if an archangel were 
to attend an afternoon tea in Mayfair or an ab- 
sinthe session in a Bohemian cafe. It was, in Dr. 
Johnson's phrase, "an unnecessary deviation from 
the usual modes of the world" which struck the 
world dumb. 

The poetry of Francis Thompson appeared in 
three small volumes: "Poems," published in 1893; 
"Sister Songs," in 1895; and "New Poems," in 
1897. The first of these volumes contained the 
"Hound of Heaven" ; though it staggered reviewers 
at large, they yielded dubious and carefully meas- 
ured praise and waited for developments. The 
pack was unleashed and the hue-and-cry raised 
on the coming of "Sister Songs" and "New Poems." 
Andrew Lang and Mr. Arthur Symons led the 
chorus of disapproval. It is amusing to read 
now that Francis Thompson's "faults are funda- 

11 



INTRODUCTION 

mental. Though he uses the treasure of the Tem- 
ple, he is not a religious poet. The note of a true 
spiritual passion never once sounds in his book." 
Another critic of the poet declares that "nothing 
could be stronger than his language, nothing 
weaker than the impression it leaves on the mind. 
It is like a dictionary of obsolete English suffering 
from a severe fit of delirium tremens." A promi- 
nent literary periodical saw, in the attempt to foist 
Thompson on the public as a genuine poet, a sec- 
tarian effort to undermine the literary press of 
England. In the course of a year the sale of 
"Sister Songs" amounted to 349 copies. The 
"New Poems" fared worse; its sale, never large, 
practically ceased a few years after its appearance, 
three copies being sold during the first six months 
of 1902. 

And all this despite strong recommendations 
from fastidious quarters. George Meredith's 
recognition was instantaneous and unreserved. 
Henley's was accompanied by reproofs. Mr. 
Richard LeGallienne was enthusiastic. Mr. Will- 
iam Archer said to a friend, "This is not work 

12 




Across the margent of the world I fled Page 47 



INTRODUCTION 

which can possibly be popular in the wide sense; 
but it is work that will be read and treasured cen- 
turies hence by those who really care for poetry." 
And he wrote to Thompson, "I assure you no con- 
ceivable reaction can wipe out or overlay such work 
as yours. It is firm-based on the rock of absolute 
beauty; and this I say all the more confidently be- 
cause it does not happen to appeal to my own spec- 
ulative, or even my own literary, prejudices." 
The most extravagant admirer of all, and the one 
who will probably turn out to have come nearer 
the mark than any of Francis Thompson's con- 
temporaries, was Mr. J. L. Garvin, the well known 
English leader-writer in politics and literature. 
"After the publication of his second volume," he 
wrote in the English Bookman, March 1897, "when 
it became clear that the 'Hound of Heaven' and 
'Sister Songs' should be read together as a strict 
lyrical sequence, there was no longer any compar- 
ison possible except the highest, the inevitable com- 
parison with even Shakespeare's Sonnets. The 
Sonnets are the greatest soliloquy in litera- 
ture. The 'Hound of Heaven' and 'Sister Songs' 

13 



INTRODUCTION 

are the second greatest; and there is no third. In 
each case it is rather consciousness imaged in the 
magic mirror of poetry than explicit autobiogra- 
phy. . . . Even with the greatest pages of 'Sister 
Songs' sounding in one's ears, one is sometimes 
tempted to think the 'Hound of Heaven' Mr. 
Thompson's high-water mark for unimaginable 
beauty and tremendous import — if we do damnably 
iterate Mr. Thompson's tremendousness, we cannot 
help it, he thrusts the word upon us. We do not 
think we forget any of the splendid things of an 
English anthology when we say that the 'Hound of 
Heaven' seems to us, on the whole, the most won- 
derful lyric (if we consider 'Sister Songs' as a se- 
quence of lyrics) in the language. It fingers all the 
stops of the spirit, and we hear now a thrilling and 
dolorous note of doom and now the quiring of the 
spheres and now the very pipes of Pan, but under 
all the still sad music of humanity. It is the return 
of the nineteenth century to Thomas a. Kempis. 
. . . The regal air, the prophetic ardors, the apoc- 
alyptic vision, Mr. Thompson has them all. A 
rarer, more intense, more strictly predestinate 

14 



INTRODUCTION 

genius has never been known to poetry. To many 
this will seem the simple delirium of over-empha- 
sis. The writer signs for those others, nowise 
ashamed, who range after Shakespeare's very Son- 
nets the poetry of a living poet, Francis Thomp- 
son." 

We do not associate Mr. Arnold Bennett with 
any of the ideas in religion or literature which 
supplied impulse to Francis Thompson. It is a 
surprise of the first magnitude to find him carried 
away into the rapture of prophecy by the "Sister 
Songs." "I declare," he says in an article appear- 
ing in July, 1895, "that for three days after this 
book appeared I read nothing else. I went about 
repeating snatches of it — snatches such as — 

'The innocent moon, that nothing does but shine, 
Moves all the labouring surges of the world.' 

My belief is that Francis Thompson has a richer 
natural genius, a finer poetical equipment, than 
any poet save Shakespeare. Show me the divinest 
glories of Shelley and Keats, even of Tennyson, 
who wrote the 'Lotus Eaters' and the songs in the 
'Princess,' and I think I can match them all out of 

15 



INTRODUCTION 

this one book, this little book that can be bought at 
an ordinary bookseller's shop for an ordinary pro- 
saic crown. I fear that in thus extolling Francis 
Thompson's work, I am grossly outraging the can- 
ons of criticism. For the man is alive, he gets up 
of a morning like common mortals, not improbably 
he eats bacon for breakfast; and every critic with 
an atom of discretion knows that a poet must not 
be called great until he is dead or very old. Well, 
please yourself what you think. But, in time to 
come, don't say I didn't tell you." A whole gen- 
eration of men has passed away since these words 
appeared; but they do not seem to be so fantastic 
and whimsical now as they seemed to be then. 

It can scarcely be claimed that the prophecies 
of Meredith, Mr. Garvin, and Mr. Arnold Ben- 
nett were of the kind which ultimately assures 
the event. The reading-world dipped curiously 
into the pages about which there was so much 
conflict of opinion; it was startled and bewil- 
dered by a novel and difficult form of verse; and 
finally it agreed with the majority of critics that 
it was mostly nonsense — too Catholic to be cath- 

16 




J?^aiMff/a/f. 



I said to dawn: Be sudden Page 47 



INTRODUCTION 

olic. The poems sold badly, the 'Hound of 
Heaven' faring best. It is a common mark of 
genius to be ahead of its time. Even Thomp- 
son's coreligionists were cold. Indeed, it may 
be said they were the coldest. If the general 
reading-public of the nineties suspected Thomp- 
son of being a Victorian reactionary of ultra- 
montane mould, the Catholic public feared him 
for his art. It was a wild unfettered thing 
which took strange liberties with Catholic pieties 
and could not be trusted to run in divine grooves. 
One can afford to extenuate the attitude of re- 
serve. It was a period when brilliant hetero- 
doxies and flaunting decadence were in the air. 
The fact is, that critics and public delivered 
Thompson over to the Catholics; and the Catho- 
lics would have nothing to do with him. Canon 
Sheehan could write of Thompson in 1898: 
"Only two Catholics — literary Catholics — have 
noticed this surprising genius — Coventry Pat- 
more and Wilfrid Meynell. The vast bulk of 
our coreligionists have not even heard his name, 
although it is already bruited amongst the Im- 

17 



INTRODUCTION 

mortals; and the great Catholic poet, for whose 
advent we have been straining our vision, has 
passed beneath our eyes, sung his immortal songs, 
and vanished." This was written almost ten years 
before Thompson died, but after his resolve to 
write no more poetry. 

It is easily within the probabilities that, small 
as was Thompson's audience during his lifetime, 
it would have been still smaller but for the ex- 
traneous interest excited by the strange story of 
his life. He was born on December 16, 1859, 
in Preston, Lancashire, whence he went at the age 
of eleven to Ushaw College, a Catholic boarding 
school for boys. This is the college where Laf- 
cadio Hearn received his education; he had left 
the school a year or two before young Thomp- 
son's arrival. Both boys were designed for the 
priesthood. Hearn lost his faith then or shortly 
afterwards: Thompson's irregular habits of 
dreamy abstraction rendered him unfit for a sac- 
erdotal career. When he had completed his 
course at college, where he had distinguished 
himself in English composition and attained re- 

18 



INTRODUCTION 

spectable standing in the classics, his father, a 
hard-working physician, entered the lad, now 
eighteen, as a student of medicine in Owen Col- 
lege, Manchester. The Thompson family had 
moved from Preston to Ashton-under-Lyne, where 
proximity to Manchester made it possible for the 
young medical student to spend his nights at 
home. 

Francis was of the silent and secretive sort 
where he could not hope to find intelligent sym- 
pathy. This, and some cloudy compromise with 
his sense of filial dutifulness, will perhaps ex- 
plain why he passed six years as a student of 
medicine without any serious purpose of becoming 
a physician and without informing his father of 
his disinclination. Three examinations and three 
failures at intervals of a year were necessary to 
convince the father of the true state of affairs. 
Stern measures were adopted; and, although the 
consequences were pitifully tragical, it is hard 
to blame the father of Francis. How are we to 
discover the extraordinary seal in a case that re- 
quires special and extraordinary treatment? 

19 



INTRODUCTION 

Francis was twenty-four years old with no 
more idea than a child's of how life is planned on 
practical lines of prosperity. The senior Thomp- 
son thought it time for him to learn and issued 
orders to find employment of some remunerative 
kind. Accordingly during the next two years 
Francis served indifferently for brief periods as 
a clerk in the shop of a maker of surgical instru- 
ments and as a canvasser of an encyclopedia. 
Both experiments in the art of making a living 
were failures, increasing paternal dissatisfaction. 
The desperate young man then enlisted in the 
army, and after a few weeks' of drilling was re- 
jected on the score of physical weakness. 

During these shiftless and unhappy years as a 
listless medical student and laggard apprentice 
the poet's chief solace was the public library of 
Manchester. In his daily absences from home 
his misery suggested another solace of a sinister 
kind. After a severe illness during his second 
year of medicine his mother, says his biographer, 
presented him with a copy of De Quincey's 
"Confessions of an Opium Eater." It is in- 

20 




I knew how the clouds arise, 

Spumed of the wild sea-snortings Page 51 



INTRODUCTION 

credible that a helluo librorum, like Thompson, 
should have reached the age of twenty without 
ever having read a book which is one of the first 
to attract every bright school-boy. This would 
be particularly true of a school-boy who lived 
near Manchester, De Quincey's own town. But 
the evidence seems to be against probabilities. 
Thompson succumbed completely to the influence 
of the great genius whose temper and circum- 
stances of life were singularly like his own. Ex- 
periments in laudanum were made and habits con- 
tracted which accentuated a natural unfitness to 
wrestle with the practical problems of getting on 
and rendered family intercourse drearier than 
ever. 

In 1885, when he was twenty-six years old, 
Francis decided to leave home. After a week in 
Manchester he requested and received from his 
father the price of a railway ticket for London. 
The trip to the vast and strange city must have 
been made with only the vaguest of plans for the 
future. The despairing youth seemed to have no 
other purpose than to rid his father of his vex- 

21 



INTRODUCTION 

atious presence. There were friends in London, on 
one of whom Francis was directed to call for a 
weekly allowance from home. But a tempera- 
mental reluctance kept the young man away from 
those who could help him, and even the weekly 
allowance after a while came to be unclaimed. 
The rough, cyclonic forces of the huge city caught 
this helpless child of a man's years in the full 
swing of their blind sweep and played sad tricks 
with him. In a period extending over nearly 
three years Francis Thompson led the life of a 
vagrant in the streets and alleys. He made one 
or two brave essays at regular work of the most 
commonplace character, but without success. The 
worn copies of ^schylus and Blake in the 
pockets of this ragged and gaunt roustabout con- 
tained no useful hints for the difficulties of the 
peculiar situation; its harshness could be trans- 
muted into temporary and blessed oblivion by 
a drug whenever the means for purchase could be 
acquired. The Guildhall Library was much 
frequented until shabbiness was excluded by the 
policeman. This outcast poet, approaching 

22 



INTRODUCTION 

thirty years of age, was at various times a boot- 
black, a newsboy, a vendor of matches, a noc- 
turnal denizen of wharves and lounger on the 
benches of city-parks. His cough-racked frame 
was the exposed target of cold and rain and winds. 
He became used to hunger. At one time a six- 
pence, for holding a horse, was his only earnings 
for a week. It was while he was aimlessly roam- 
ing the streets one night almost delirious from 
starvation that a prosperous shoe-merchant, be- 
nevolently engaged in religious rescue-work, came 
across Thompson, and, struck by the incongruity 
of his gentle speech, induced him to accept em- 
ployment in his shop. But one cannot allow bus- 
iness to suffer on account of an inveterate blun- 
derer, even though the blunderer wear wings and 
has endeared himself to the family. Mr. Mc- 
Master, kindly Anglican lay-missionary, who 
deserves grateful remembrance for recognizing 
and temporarily helping merit under the most 
deceptive disguise, was obliged much against his 
inclination to dismiss Francis and to allow him to 
fall back into the pit of squalor and vagabondage. 

23 



INTRODUCTION 

But the few months of reprieve had supplied 
Thompson with the impulse to write. Shortly 
after he was dropped from the McMaster estab- 
lishment Mr. Wilfrid Meynell, the editor of Merry 
England, a Catholic magazine, received the follow- 
ing letter: "Feb. 23rd, '87— Dear Sir,— In en- 
closing the accompanying article for your inspec- 
tion, I must ask pardon for the soiled state of the 
manuscript. It is due, not to slovenliness, but to 
the strange places and circumstances under which 
it has been written. For me, no less than Parolles, 
the dirty nurse experience has something fouled. 
I enclose stamped envelope for a reply, since I do 
not desire the return of the manuscript, regarding 
your judgment of its worthlessness as quite final. 
I can hardly expect that where my prose fails my 
verse will succeed. Nevertheless, on the principle 
of 'Yet will I try the last,' I have added a few 
specimens of it, with the off chance that one may be 
less poor than the rest. Apologizing very sincerely 
for any intrusion on your valuable time, I remain 
yours with little hope, 

"Francis Thompson. 
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Naked I wait Thy love's uplifted stroke! 

smitten me to my knee; 

I am defenceless utterly Page 55 



INTRODUCTION 

"Kindly address your rejection to the Charing 
Cross Post Office." 

The unpromising aspect of the manuscript, 
thus introduced, was the occasion of editorial 
neglect for some months. When at last Mr. Mey- 
nell gave it his attention he was electrified into 
action. He wrote to the address given by Thomp- 
son. The letter was returned from the dead-letter 
office after many days. Then he published one of 
the poems mentioned in the letter, "The Passion 
of Mary," in the hope that the author would dis- 
close his whereabouts. The plan succeeded and 
brought a letter from Thompson with a new 
address. Mr. Meynell tried to waylay him at the 
new address, a chemist's shop in Drury Lane, but 
with characteristic shiftlessness the poet forgot to 
call there for possible letters. But the seller of 
drugs finally established communications between 
the editor and the poet, and one day, more than a 
year after Thompson's first literary venture had 
been sent, he visited the office of Merry England. 
Mr. Everard Meynell, the poet's biographer, thus 
describes the entrance of the poet into his father's 

25 



INTRODUCTION 

sanctum. "My father was told that Mr. Thomp- 
son wished to see him. 'Show him up,' he said, 
and was left alone. Then the door opened, and a 
strange hand was thrust in. The door closed, but 
Thompson had not entered. Again it opened, 
again it shut. At the third attempt a waif of a 
man came in. No such figure had been looked 
for; more ragged and unkempt than the average 
beggar, with no shirt beneath his coat and bare feet 
in broken shoes, he found my father at a loss for 
words. 'You must have had access to many books 
when you wrote that essay,' was what he said. 
'That,' said Thompson, his shyness at once re- 
placed by an acerbity that afterwards became one 
of the most familiar of his never-to-be-resented 
mannerisms, 'that is precisely where the essay 
fails. I had no books by me at the time save 
TEschylus and Blake.' There was little to'be done 
for him at that interview save the extraction of a 
promise to call again. He made none of the con- 
fidences characteristic of a man seeking sympathy 
and alms. He was secretive and with no eager- 
ness for plans for his benefit, and refused the offer 

26 



INTRODUCTION 

of a small weekly sum that would enable him to 
sleep in a bed and sit at a table." 

By patience and delicately offered kindnesses 
Mr. and Mrs. Meynell at length won the difficult 
privilege of helping the shy, nervous, high-strung 
spirit wandering in pain, hunger and exile amid 
the indecencies of extreme penury in a great city. 
They were helped by the friendly sympathy and 
care of Premonstratensian and Franciscan monks. 
Thompson had sounded, and become familiar with, 
the depths of social degradation in all its external 
aspects of sordidness. The most extraordinary 
part of his singular experience is that he affords a 
striking instance of the triumph of soul and mind 
over beleaguering circumstance. The nightmare 
of his environment failed to subdue him. He pre- 
served his spiritual sensitiveness, and literary 
ideals of a most exalted kind, through the most 
depressing and demoralizing experiences. The 
following passage in that first essay offered to Mr. 
Meynell, entitled "Paganism: Old and New," a 
vindication of Christian over pagan ideals in art, 
shows the rich, colorful tone of mind of one who 

27 



INTRODUCTION 

could walk unstained among the world's impur- 
ities. "Bring back then, I say, in conclusion, even 
the best age of Paganism, and you smite beauty 
on the cheek. But you cannot bring back the best 
age of Paganism, the age when Paganism was a 
faith. None will again behold Apollo in the fore- 
front of the morning, or see Aphrodite in the upper 
air loose the long lustre of her golden locks. But 
you may bring back — dii avertant omen — the Pa- 
ganism of the days of Pliny, and Statius, and Juve- 
nal; of much philosophy, and little belief; of 
superb villas and superb taste; of banquets for the 
palate in the shape of cookery, and banquets for 
the eye in the shape of art; of poetry singing dead 
songs on dead themes with the most polished and 
artistic vocalisation; of everything most polished, 
from the manners to the marble floors; of vice 
carefully drained out of sight, and large fountains 
of virtue springing in the open air; — in one word, 
a most shining Paganism indeed — as putrescence 
also shines." Unlike George Gissing and so 
many others who had to wade to celebrity through 
sloughs of bitter destitution, Francis Thompson 

23 




Yea, faileth now even dream 
The dreamer Page 55 



INTRODUCTION 

felt no inclination to capitalize his expert knowl- 
edge of back streets and alleys for profit and the 
morbid entertainment of the curious. His single 
failing in yielding to the attraction of an insidious 
drug seemed to be impotent to affect his high ad- 
mirations and his clear perceptions in the regions 
of honor and religion. 

It is surely one of the literary glories of a dis- 
tinguished family that Mr. and Mrs. Meynell 
succeeded in helping Thompson to emancipate him- 
self from the enslavement of a tyrannic habit. 
His poetic genius began to flower in the new lib- 
erty. For the next ten years interest in his 
poetry and literary friends and connections, few 
and select, made his life comparatively happy. 
But he maintained a large measure of independ- 
ence to the last. That he was never ungrateful 
to those who befriended him, his poems are ample 
proof. But in London he always had his own 
lodgings in a cheap but respectable quarter of the 
city. His unpunctual and preoccupied manner 
sometimes created small distresses for his de- 
voted friends to relieve. During the last ten 

29 



INTRODUCTION 

years of his life he wrote little poetry. His vi- 
tality, never vigorous, was ebbing and unequal 
to the demands of inspired verse. But during 
these years of decline he wrote much golden 
prose. He was a regular and highly valued Con- 
tibutor to the Academy, the Athenceum, the Na- 
tion, and the Daily Chronicle. One can hardly 
fail to be impressed by the mere industry of a 
writer of reputed slack habits of work. The pub- 
lished volume of his selected essays is literary 
criticism, as learned and allusive as Matthew 
Arnold's, and as nicely poised, with the advantage 
of being poised in more rarified heights than 
Arnold's wings could hope to scale. In this book 
is his classic and most wonderful essay on Shelley, 
written before his strength began to flag, in which 
prose seems to be carried off its feet, as it were, 
in a very storm of poetic impulse. The published 
essays are not a tithe of Thompson's writings for 
the press. Moreover, we have a study of Blessed 
John de la Salle, a little volume on "Health and 
Holiness," and a large "Life of St. Ignatius 
Loyola," none of them suggesting even remotely 

30 



INTRODUCTION 

the plantigrade writing of the mechanical 
hack. 

During the last year of his life, when consump- 
tion had almost completely undermined resistance, 
his old habit reasserted its empire. But it was 
not for long, and can hardly be said to have has- 
tened the end, which came on November 13, 1907, 
in the Hospital of St. John and St. Elizabeth. He 
was buried in St. Mary's Cemetery, Kensal Green, 
and on his coffin were roses from George Meredith's 
garden, with the poet-novelist's message: "A true 
poet, one of the small band." 

The "Hound of Heaven" has been called the 
greatest ode in the English language. Such was 
the contemporary verdict of some of the most re- 
spected critics of the time, and the conviction of its 
justness deepens with the passing of years. Recall 
the writers of great odes, Milton, Dryden, Pope, 
Gray, Collins, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Cole- 
ridge, — the best they have done will not outstare 
the "Hound of Heaven." Where shall we find 
its equal for exaltation of mood that knows no 
fatigue from the first word to the last? The 

31 



INTRODUCTION 

motion of angelic hosts must be like the move- 
ment of this ode, combining in some marvellous 
and mysterious way the swiftness of lightning 
with the stately progess of a pageant white with 
the blinding white light of an awful Presence. 
The note of modernness is the quality which is 
most likely to mislead us in forecasting favorably 
the durability of contemporary poetry, appealing 
as it does to so many personal issues irrelevant 
to the standards of immortal art. This is pre- 
cisely the note which is least conspicuous in the 
"Hound of Heaven." The poem might have been 
written in the days of Shakespeare, or, in a dif- 
ferent speech, by Dante or Calderon. The Rev. 
Francis P. LeBuffe, S. J., has written an interest- 
ing book on the "Hound of Heaven," pointing out 
the analogy between the poem and the psalms of 
David; and another Jesuit, the late ivev. J. F. X. 
O'Connor, in a published "Study" of the poem, 
says that in it Francis Thompson "seems to sing, 
in verse, the thought of St. Ignatius in the spirit- 
ual exercises, — the thought of St. Paul in the 
tender, insistent love of Christ for the soul, and 

32 




The hid battlements of Eternity: 

Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then 

Round the half-glimpsed turrets slowly wash again Page 56 



INTRODUCTION 

the yearning of Christ for that soul which ever 
runs after creatures, till the love of Christ wakens 
in it a love of its God, which dims and deadens 
all love of creatures except through love for Him. 
This was the love of St. Paul, of St. Ignatius, of 
St. Stanislaus, of St. Francis of Assisi, of St. 
Clare, of St. Teresa." 

The neologisms and archaic words employed in 
the poem seem to be a legitimate and instinctive 
effort of the poet's inspiration to soar above the 
limitations of time and to liberate itself from the 
transient accretions of a living, and therefore con- 
stantly changing, mode of speech. He strove after 
an enfranchisement of utterance, devoid of strati- 
fying peculiarities, assignable to no age or epoch, 
and understood of all. A soul-shaking thought, 
prevalent throughout Christendom, was felt im- 
aginatively by a highly endowed poet, and, like 
impetuous volcanic fires that fling heavenward 
mighty fragments and boulders of mountain in their 
red release, found magnificent expression in ele- 
mental grandeurs of language, shot through with 
the wild lights of hidden flames and transcending 

33 



INTRODUCTION 

all pettiness of calculated artifice and fugitive 
fashion. 

The dominating idea in the "Hound of Heaven" 
is so familiar, so — one might say — innate, that it 
is almost impudent to undertake to explain it. 
Even in the cases of persons to whom the reading 
of poetry is an uncultivated and difficult art, there 
is an instantaneous leap of recognition as the 
thought emerges from the cloudy glories of the 
poem. Still, modern popular systems of philoso- 
phy are so dehumanizing in their tendencies, and 
so productive of what may be called secondary and 
artificially planted instincts, that it is perhaps not 
entirely useless to attempt to elucidate the obvious. 

"The heavens," says Hazlitt, "have gone far- 
ther off and become astronomical." The home- 
like conception of the universe in mediaeval times, 
when dying was like going out of one room into 
another, and man entertained a neighborly feeling 
for the angels, has a tendency to disappear as 
science unfolds more and more new infinities of 
time and space, new infinities of worlds and forms 
of life. The curious notion has crept in, that 

34 



INTRODUCTION 

man must sink lower into insignificance with 
every new discovery of the vastness and huge de- 
sign of creation. God would seem to have over- 
reached Himself in disclosing His power and 
majesty, stunning and overwhelming the intellect 
and heart with the crushing weight of the evidences 
of His Infinity. We have modern thinkers regard- 
ing Christian notions of the Godhead as impossible 
to a mind acquainted with the paralyzing reve- 
lations of scientific knowledge. The late John 
Fiske used to deride what he called the anthro- 
morphism of the Christian idea of God, as of a 
venerable, white-bearded man. And these phil- 
osophers deem it more reverent to deny any 
personal relationship between God and man for 
the reason that God is too great to be interested 
in man, and man too little to be an object of 
interest. 

Before indicating the essential error of this atti- 
tude, it is necessary to state, merely for the sake 
of historical accuracy, that the Christian concep- 
tion of the Godhead, as expressed by St. Thomas 
Aquinas, Dante, Lessius, and a host of Christian 

35 



INTRODUCTION 

writers, has never been approached in its sublime 
suggestions of Infinite and Eternal power and glory 
by any modern philosopher. In the second and 
third Lectures of Cardinal Newman's, "Scope and 
Nature of University Education," there is an out- 
line of the Christian teaching of the nature of God 
which, in painstaking accuracy of thought and 
sheer grandeur of conception, has no counterpart 
in modern literature. 

Let us always remember that telescope and mi- 
croscope in all the range of their discoveries have 
not uncovered the existence of anything greater 
than man himself. The most massive star 
of the Milky Way is not so wonderful as the 
smallest human child. Moreover man's present 
entourage of illimitable space and countless cir- 
cling suns and planets cannot be said to have cost 
an omnipotent God more trouble, so to speak, 
than a universe a million times smaller. The 
prodigality of the Creator reveals His endless 
resources; if the vision of sidereal abysses and 
flaming globes intimidates me and makes me cyn- 
ical about my unimportance, is it not because I 

36 




Whether man's heart or life it be which yields 
Thee harvest, must Thy harvest fields 
Be dunged with rotten death? Page 57 



INTRODUCTION 

have lost the high consciousness of a spiritual 
being and forgotten the unplumbed chasms which 
separate matter from mind? 

In Francis Thompson's Catholic philosophy, 
which must be partially understood if the reader 
is to get at the heart of the "Hound of Heaven," 
the tremendous manifestations of God's attributes 
of power prepare us to expect equally tremendous 
manifestations of His attributes of love. The 
more prodigal God is discovered to be in lavish 
expenditures of omnipotence in the material uni- 
verse, the more alert the soul becomes to look 
for and to detect overwhelming surprises of Di- 
vine Love. Hence, to Thompson there was noth- 
ing irrational in the special revelation of God to 
man, in His Incarnation, His death on the cross, 
and His sacramental life in the Church. The 
Divine energy of God's love, as displayed in the 
supernatural revelation of Himself, seems to be 
even vaster and more intense than the Divine 
energy of creation displayed in the revelation of 
nature. Every new revelation of God's power 
and wisdom which science unfolds serves only to 

37 



INTRODUCTION 

restore a balance in our mind between God's 
power and God's love. The more astronomical 
the heavens become, the closer they bring God to 
us. 

Another conception of God to be kept in mind, 
if we are to grasp the meaning of the "Hound of 
Heaven," is the omniscient character, the infinite 
perfection, of God's knowledge. God sees each 
of us as fully and completely as if there were no 
one else and nothing else to see except us. Prac- 
tically speaking, God gives each one of us His 
undivided attention. And through this spacious 
channel of His Divine and exclusive attention 
pour the ocean-tides of His love. The weak soul 
is afraid of the terrible excess of Divine Love. 
It tries to elude it; but Love meets it at every 
cross-road and by-path, down which it would run 
and hide itself, and gently turns it back. 

Francis Thompson, in an interpretation of "A 
Narrow Vessel," has left us in prose a description 
of human weakness and wilfulness reluctant of 
its true bliss. The following passage is an ex- 
cellent commentary on the "Hound of Heaven." 

38 



INTRODUCTION 

"Though God," he says, "asks of the soul but to 
love Him what it may, and is ready to give an 
increased love for a poor little, the soul feels that 
this infinite love demands naturally its whole self, 
that if it begin to love God it may not stop short 
of all it has to yield. It is troubled, even if it 
did go a brief way, on the upward path; it fears 
and recoils from the whole great surrender, the 
constant effort beyond itself which is sensibly 
laid on it. It falls back with relieved content- 
ment on some human love, a love on its own plane, 
where somewhat short of total surrender may go 
to requital, where no upward effort is needful. 
And it ends by giving for the meanest, the most 
unsufficing and half-hearted return, that utter 
self -surrender and self-effacement which it denied 
to God. Even (how rarely) if the return be such 
as mortal may render, how empty and unsatiated 
it leaves the soul. One always is less generous 
to love than the other." 

God walks morning, noon and eve in the garden 
of the soul, calling it to a happiness which af- 
frights it. And the timid and self-seeking soul 

39 



INTRODUCTION 

strives to hide itself under the stars, under the 
clouds of heaven, under human love, under the 
distractions of work and pleasure and study, 
offers itself as a wistful servitor to child and man 
and nature, if they will but afford it a refuge 
from the persistent and gentle accents of pur- 
suivant Love. But all things are in league with 
God, Who made and rules them. They cannot 
conspire against Him. They betray the refugee. 
He turns in abject surrender, and is astonished 
to find the rest and happiness that he quested for 
so wildly. The Divine thwartings which had 
harassed the soul become a tender mystery of 
Infinite Love forcing itself upon an unworthy 
and unwilling creature. Someone has said thai 
every life is a romance of Divine Love. The 
"Hound of Heaven" is a version of that romance 
which smites the soul into an humble mood of 
acknowledgment and penitence. 

James J. Daly, S. J. 



40 



OF "THE HOUND OF HEAVEN" 




RANCIS THOMPSON, born in Pres- 
ton in 1859, spent the greater part 
of his mature life in London where 
he died in 1907. He was educated 
at Ushaw College near Durham, and afterwards 
went to Owens College, Manchester, to qualify as a 
doctor. 

But his gift as prescriber and healer lay else- 
where than in the consulting-room. He walked to 
London in search of a living, finding, indeed, a 
prolonged near approach to death in its streets; 
until at length his literary powers were discovered 
by himself and by others, and he began, in his later 
twenties, an outpouring of verse which endured 
for a half-decade of years — his "Poems," his 
"Sister Songs," and his "New Poems." 

"The Hound of Heaven" "marked the return of 
41 



THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 

the nineteenth century to Thomas a Kempis." The 
great poetry of it transcended, in itself and in its 
influence, all conventions; so that it won the love 
of a Catholic Mystic like Coventry Patmore; was 
included by Dean Beeching in his "Lyra Sacra" 
among its older high compeers; and gave new heart 
to quite another manner of man, Edward Burne- 
Jones. 

W. M. 




42 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

When she lit her glimmering tapers . . Frontispiece 

FACING 
PAGE 

Titanic glooms of chasmed fears 6 

Across the margent of the world I fled .... 12 

I said to dawn: Be sudden 16 

I knew how the clouds arise 20 

Naked I wait Thy love's uplifted stroke! ... 24 

Yea, faileth now even dream 28 

The hid battlements of Eternity 32 

Whether man's heart or life it be which yields . . 36 

I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways .... 45 

Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside . . 46 

Thunder-driven, They clanged His chariot ... 48 

In her wind-walled palace 50 

I knew all the swift importings 52 

I shook the pillaring hours 54 

And now my heart is as a broken fount ... 56 

That Voice is round me like a bursting sea ... 60 




I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways 
Of my own mind 



THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 




FLED Him, down the nights and 
down the days; 
I fled Him, down the arches of the 
years ; 
'. '. fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways 

Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears 
I hid from Him, and under running laughter. 
Up vistaed hopes, I sped; 
And shot, precipitated, 
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears, 

From those strong Feet that followed, followed 
after. 

But with unhurrying chase, 

And unperturbed pace, 
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, 

They beat — and a Voice beat 

More instant than the Feet — 
"All things betray thee, who betrayest Me." 
45 




•V* 




Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside 



THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 

I pleaded, out law-wise, 
By many a hearted casement, curtained red, 

Trellised with intertwining charities 
(For, though I knew His love Who followed, 

Yet was* I sore adread 
Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside) ; 
But, if one little casement parted wide, 
The gust of His approach would clash it to. 
Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue. 
Across the margent of the world I fled, 

And troubled the gold gateways of the stars, 
Smiting for shelter on their clanged bars; 
Fretted to dulcet jars 
And silvern chatter the pale ports o' the moon. 
I said to dawn: Be sudden; to eve: Be soon — 
With thy young skyey blossoms heap me over 
From this tremendous Lover! 
Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see! 

I tempted all His servitors, but to find 
My own betrayal in their constancy, 
In faith to Him their fickleness to me, 

Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit. 
To all swift things for swiftness did I sue; 

47 



THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 

Clung to the whistling mane of every wind. 
But whether they swept, smoothly fleet, 
The long savannahs of the blue; 

Or whether, Thunder-driven, 
They clanged His chariot 'thwart a heaven 
Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o' 
their feet: — 
Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue* 

Still with unhurrying chase, 

And unperturbed pace, 
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, 

Came on the following Feet, 

And a Voice above their beat — 
"Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me." 



48 




Thunder-driven, 

They clanged His chariot 'thwart a heaven 

Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o' their feet 




SOUGHT no more that after which I 
strayed 
In face of man or maid; 
But still within the little children's 
eyes 
Seems something, something that replies, 
They at least are for me, surely for me! 
I turned me to them very wistfully; 
But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair 

With dawning answers there, 
Their angel plucked them from me by the hair. 



50 




?j*~f> a /c 



In her wind-walled palace 




OME then, ye other children, 

Nature's — share 
With me" (said I) "y° ur delicate 
fellowship ; 
Let me greet you lip to lip, 
Let me twine with you caresses, 

Wantoning 
With our Lady-Mother's vagrant tresses, 

Banqueting 
With her in her wind-walled palace, 
Underneath her azured dais, 
Quaffing, as your taintless way is, 
From a chalice 
Lucent-weeping out of the dayspring." 

So it was done: 
/ in their delicate fellowship was one — 
Drew the bolt of Nature's secrecies. 

/ knew all the swift importings 
On the wilful face of skies ; 
I knew how the clouds arise, 
51 



THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 

Spumed of the wild sea-snortings ; 
All that's born or dies 
Rose and drooped with; made them shapers 
Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine — 
With them joyed and was bereaven. 
I was heavy with the even, 
When she lit her glimmering tapers 
Round the day's dead sanctities. 
I laughed in the morning's eyes. 
I triumphed and I saddened with all weather, 

Heaven and I wept together, 
And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine; 
Against the red throb of its sunset-heart 
I laid my own to beat, , 
And share commingling heat; 
But not by that, by that, was eased my human 

smart. 
In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek. 
For ah ! we know not what each other says, 

These things and I; in sound / speak — 
Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences. 
Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake by drouth; 
Let her, if she would owe me, 
52 




I knew all the swift importings 
On the wilful face of skies 



THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 

Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me 

The breasts o' her tenderness: 
Never did any milk of hers once bless 
My thirsting mouth. 
Nigh and nigh draws the chase, 

With unperturbed pace, 
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, 
And past those noised Feet 
A Voice comes yet more fleet — 
"Lo! naught contents thee, who content'st 
not Me." 



53 




£/$juEEM*t*. 



I shook the pillaring hours 
And pulled my life upon me 




AKED I wait Thy love's uplifted 
stroke ! 
My harness piece by piece Thou 
hast hewn from me, 
And smitten me to my knee; 
I am defenceless utterly. 
I slept, methinks, and woke, 
And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep. 
In the rash lustihead of my young powers, 

I shook the pillaring hours 
And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears, 
I stand amid the dust o' the mounded years — 
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap. 
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke, 
Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream. 

Yea, faileth now even dream 
The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist; 
Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist 
I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist, 
Are yielding; cords of all too weak account 

55 



THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 

For earth, with heavy griefs so overplussed. 

Ah! is Thy love indeed 
A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed, 
Suffering no flowers except its own to mount? 
Ah! must — 
Designer infinite! — 
Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst 

limn with it? 
My freshness spent its wavering shower i' the dust; 
And now my heart is as a broken fount, 
Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever 

From the dank thoughts that shiver 
Upon the sighful branches of my mind. 

Such is; what is to be? 
The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind? 
I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds; 
Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds 
From the hid battlements of Eternity: 
Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then 
Round the half-glimpsed turrets slowly wash 
again; 
But not ere him who summoneth 
I first have seen, enwound 
56 




And now my heart is as a broken fount, 
Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever 
From the dank thoughts that shiver 



THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 

With glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned : 
His name I know, and what his trumpet saith. 
Whether man's heart or life it be which yields 

Thee harvest, must Thy harvest fields 

Be dunged with rotten death? 



57 




OW of that long pursuit 
Comes on at hand the bruit; 
That Voice is round me like a 
bursting sea: 
"And is thy earth so marred, 
Shattered in shard on shard? 
Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me! 
Strange, piteous, futile thing, 
Wherefore should any set thee love apart? 
Seeing none but I makes much of naught" (He 

said), 
"And human love needs human meriting: 

How hast thou merited — 
Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot? 

Alack, thou knowest not 
How little worthy of any love thou art! 
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee, 

Save Me, save only Me? 
All which I took from thee I did but take, 
Not for thy harms, 
59 



THE HOUND OF HEAVEN 

But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms. 

All which thy child's mistake 
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home: 

Rise, clasp My hand, and come." 

Halts by me that footfall: 
Is my gloom, after all, 
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly? 
"Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest, 
I am He Whom thou seekest! 
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me." 



60 




That Voice is round me like a bursting sea 






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